Journey into "Raymond Custy's Garden of Worldly Delights"

This is the opening of a story included in "The Weight of a Body," my first story collection. It was first published by Ghost Road Press at its tiny office on Evans Avenue off I-25 in Denver.  I dropped by on a summer day in 2005 to pick up the first copies hot off the press. I was dying to show off the books. I delivered the first copy to my uncle. I owed him a visit. His reading was mostly focused on the Denver dailies sports pages -- he was an athlete and a coach -- but he congratulated me and said he'd read it. I then drove back the 95 miles to Cheyenne to share the news with my family. My favorite story is set in a Florida beach town where I spent some of my youth. It has some basis in fact. I did grow up as the oldest kid in a big Irish-Catholic family. My brother and I walked to the beach to surf. My father was a reclusive sort but who can blame him?

I share this as a teaser to my story collection. I have another one in the works but the first one still has some zing. That's the author speaking. Anyway, to read more click on the cover image in the right sidebar.  The collection goes for $14.99 but if you're as dedicated a Kindle reader as I am, you can get a bargain. Check it out.

Raymond Custy’s Garden of Worldly Delights

            In June of 1967, when I was almost 16, my father checked out for a year. Locked himself in his room. Threw away the key. No messages. No contact of any kind. It was as if he died or decamped to Tahiti, only worse, because I could walk down the hall past that locked door and hear London Philharmonic symphonies blasting from the hi-fi. A cough might erupt from behind closed doors; the whisper of slippered feet. Sometimes a thin blue stream of cigarette smoke escaped from the room and formed a cloud in the hallway. If I was alone, I would stand in the midst of the cloud and inhale, hoping that the smoke might be the bearer of some singular message from my dad, the hermit.

            This hermit lived surrounded by eleven children, one wife, two dogs, a cat and a cage full of hamsters. On the brilliant June day my father bolted the door, the family queued up to coax him out. My mother went first. "Raymond Custy!" she yelled. "You come out of there right this minute!"  She waited, arms crossed, bare feet tapping on the wooden floors. I could hear the cars passing on the street, on their way to the beach. I could even hear the slap of the waves on the sand two blocks away.

OK people, it's all true, every single bit and byte of it

This photo arrived in my inbox on the same day that "Disclosure Day"
arrived in theaters nationwide. Coincidence? You decide.

How a book does -- and doesn't -- get published

Part of my life as a blogger is updating readers as to my whereabouts (I've always wanted to blog this word). Most of the time, I'm in my home office at the PC, typing madly. There are big windows to watch passersby pass by, most of them neighbors in Tomoka Station, Fla. There are lots of kids in my neighborhood, many new arrivals being pushed around by proud parents. Kids on bikes, some motorized but most the old-fashioned pedal kind. Groveside is a new branch of a five-branched development. I see many service trucks: lawn services, fencing companies, contractors building various add-ons: fancy stoves and refrigerators to replace the boring ones the houses came with. Toilets, too, as we got basic toilets  but tall and big and disabled people needed something better.

I have a lot to see, many things to distract me from the jobs at hand. My main job now is promoting my new book. It is no easy task. Best-selling writers have big-time publishers in NYC, companies that handle a book's editing, production, distribution, and publicity. That's what all writers wish for, an advance and a contract for a book to write and revise and then transmit to the publisher. Then it's on to the next book. Or maybe a croissant and a cup of Java. 

That was what the world was like when I first started writing in the 1970s. When I finally penned a sci-fi postapocalyptic novel of my own in the 1980s, I went to a writers conference and landed an agent. I became a pest. Finally, Ray Powers of the Marje Fields Agency said send me a few chapters and quickly disappeared. The next week, I polished some intro chapters and a short plot description and sent it off to Ray. He told me to finish the manuscript and send it. 

I will bet you a chest filled with doubloons (or maybe bitcoins) that he thought I would never finish. Many writers don't, you know, especially when they find out how hard a task it really is. But I had a secret weapon. I was born to write and was always hard at it. I don't know why this is. It's beautiful. It's a curse. I am happiest when writing in a journal or pounding away at my keyboard. I have tried to escape into the military, academia, the corporate world. But I keep returning to writing. 

My novel, "Zeppelins Over Denver," took me ten years to write, revise, and find a publisher. My critique group guided me along the way. I got an M.F.A. in creative writing. My CSU profs and fellow student writers were terrific and brutal. I was on a mission from God, as the Blues Brothers put so well. How else to describe it? In the end, though, that's what it takes., You have to possess a missionary zeal to do this. You have to write and quit writing and write more and despair and then write more. In the end, I finished a found an iconoclastic press in Detroit run by a friend, poet/prof/performer M.L. Liebler.

The Ridgeway Press of Michigan publishes books that others don't and I'm one of them. Thank you Ridgeway and M.L He's published tons of books of poetry and essays. His most recent is a memoir with this title: "Hound Dog: A Memoir of Rock, Revolution, and Redemption" from University of Wisconsin Stevens Point's Cornerstone Press. Did you know that university presses publish many wonderful books? Go buy one today. 

Meanwhile, if you're interested in my book, you will have to go to Amazon and look me up on my author page at http://amazon.com/author/michaeltshay. I am at work on an author's page on BookBub which should be the place to go once I'm finished with the design. 

One more thing: I don't make much money from an Amazon purchase. And Ridgeway is not set up for buying books. But you can find me on Venmo at @michael-shay-28 or 307-241-2903. Send me $35.22 and put the mailing address and who to sign it to in Notes. Then, I will put it in a padded envelope, take it to the p.o., send it on its way and pray that it gets there in these times that USPS seems to run with all the efficiency of the governmental agency in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil." Keep your fingers crossed. As you probably know, Amazon is run with the efficiency that we used to expect from USPS. Packages go right to my door. The delivery man even rings to bell and scampers back to his Amazon Prime truck and drives away at a prudent speed. 

I decided to look up Amazon Founder and Blue Origin mastermind Jeff Bezos on Wikipedia. I was surprised to find that he was born in Albuquerque (I was conceived in Albuquerque!) to a teen mom and a Danish unicyclist (my father sold Armour meats and my mom was a registered nurse). During his high school years in Miami, Bezos attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida, my alma mater (English major, class of '76). A local newspaper reported that in his graduation speech, Bezos "hoped that humanity would eventually move heavy industry and large populations into space while preserving earth as 'a huge national park.' "

Think about that when you order an air fryer at deep discount from Amazon. Or a book.

Readers are beginning to have questions and comments about the novel...

I should have done this a long time ago but today I created an author page on Book Bub under Michael T Shay. The road to writing and editing a book ends with a book that needs readers, surprisingly enough. I thought my blog and in-person marketing would be sufficient. But it's not. While I get the new site up and running, please feel free to ask any questions or make any comments about "Zeppelins Over Denver" here. I can answer your questions on this public forum or via e-mail or by letter. Please ask me to respond via letter! I am a lifelong writer of letters and receive so few these days. Many circulars about metal roofs and new-car sales and restaurant openings. But few letters. Thrill me!

Via Audible, I spend a year in an Irish garden

On my June 1 post, I talked about buying on Audible "In Kiltumper: A Year in an Irish Garden." I mentioned that I don't listen to many audiobooks as my vision remains fine and I love reading. There's a little message inside my head that says: "Audiobooks are for endless drives across Wyoming." During my 25 years at the Wyoming Arts Council, I made many drives across the 98,000-square mile state and listened to cassettes, disks, and, briefly, on one overlooked Spotify intro subscription in a state auto. 

So many great memories of Janet Evanovich (perfect to distract a keyed-up driver on I-80 winter drives), a dozen Wyoming-based mysteries by C.J. Box and Craig Johnson, an odd Chuck Palahniuk novel on the way to Sheridan (weird scene in a swimming pool), and one perfect summer drive to Jackson with geological landmarks discussed in John McPhee's "Rising from the Plains." Kurt Vonnegut's "Galapagos" got me all the way from Cheyenne to Salt Lake City. 

So here I am, taking a break from the printed page and listening to the wonderful voices of Niall Williams and Christine Breen on Audible. Twelve months in an Irish garden. I am transfixed. My Irish roots and life-long gardening interests are both addressed. In "March," an Irish priest dropped by the narrators' little patch of land in County Clare, and conducted mass in the garden. Neither Niall or Chris are active Catholics (more the fallen-away variety) but both agree and it's glorious. 

But there was something about it.

Quote from Chapter 4, April

"The moment of spring sets everything within me tremoring."

I've felt it in Wyoming. 

March is filled with wind-whipped snowstorms. April's beginning can be much the same. But there is a day when I step out to sun and calm. I look at the garden. A few bulb plants bloom. It's still six weeks before I put seedlings in the ground. 

But it's the light of those early April days that transform me. Every day the light stretches out to those long summer days. On June 21, the western sky is still lit at 10. I love and fear that day as days start to get shorter until it's dark at 4:30 in late November, even at Halloween the kids gets started going door to door before 5.

I have felt the tremoring Williams describes. Here in Florida, it is calmed by the coming of heat and humidity. By June 6, the tremoring has given way to sweat and sunburn.

So what does a novel set in 1919 Colorado have to do with the Detroit of the 1960s?

My historical novel, Zeppelins Over Denver, was released in early May by The Ridgeway Press in Michigan, Detroit to be exact.

The novel, set in the Colorado of 1919, doesn’t have much to do with either Detroit or Michigan, but its life has a lot to do with a couple of determined Detroiters. It’s the press co-founded by M.L. Liebler, a poet and author whose resume is about five miles long. As he writes about in Hound Dog: A Poet’s Memoir or Rock, Revolution, and Redemption (Cornerstone Press), he’s a Detroit native, a resident of St. Clair Shores his entire life. He was there to experienced the rise of Motown and the Detroit rock scene that flourished in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond.

He pursued an advanced degree with the vigor he brought to music and poetry. His title at Wayne State University is professor of English and Labor Studies, a one-two punch that shouts Detroit. It has been my good fortune to work with M.L. in the literary arts world, mostly through the YMCA Writers Voice Project. It was launched from New York’s West Side Y (now at the the Central YMCA of New York) by the late Jason Shinder. It has been a facet of Y programming across the U.S., in places as far-flung as the Cheyenne Family YMCA in Cheyenne, Wyo., where my wife Christine supervised the program. Sadly, the Writer's Voice program Chris supervised vanished when the Cheyenne Y closed last year. A sad day on the lone prairie.

As coordinator of the literary program at the Wyoming Arts Council, I enlisted M.L. as a judge for our literary fellowships and had the pleasure of driving him across that vast state and introducing him to The Legend of the Jackalope as well as a batch of very fine poets and writers. M.L took me on when I was failing to find a publisher. I will be eternally grateful to him for that. He was ably assisted by WSU student and editor/designer Brandon Wade. I will have more to say about this as time passes and I look for ways to lift up this blog.

Meanwhile, excuse me while I figure out intriguing ways to promote a book published by one of America's stalwart small presses. It was launched by the Ridgeway Press and Artist Collection 52 years ago. Its roots are deep in the Detroit alternative arts scene. Here's a description taken from Detroit's Book Beat:

Ridgeway Press & Collective is one of Detroit’s vital independent literary-artistic forces. With weekly online meetings, shared vacations, and a screwball newsletter, this band of creatives has remained together, loyal to the call of Ridgeway Dada. 

There is happiness aplenty (and sorrow) in This Is Happiness

This is happiness.

This is happiness.

This is happiness.

So says Christy, one of the characters in Niall Williams’ novel, “This Is Happiness.” Christy rides his bicycle with our protagonist and narrator Noel (Noe) Crowe in Faha in County Clare, Ireland. It’s the spring of 1958. Christy is an electric man, sent to the village to sign up people for “the electric,” the miracle of electricity finally coming to rural Ireland. It takes a while for Williams to reveal the man’s true purpose, to apologize to a local widow, Annie Mooney, for leaving her at the altar 50 years before. Christy finds shelter with Noe and his grandparents, Doady and Ganga.

Noe, 17, learns of the man’s mission and vows to help and therein lies the heartache and happiness of the tale. Noe fled to his grandparents’ house after his mother died, he quit the seminary and found himself at loose ends with his father in Dublin. For Noe: “All that had stitched me into this life came undone and I couldn’t escape the feeling that folded against my back were wings that had failed to open.” I don’t know of a better description of being 17 in Dublin or Faha or Daytona Beach, Florida. Anywhere.

This is my first Williams’ novel and I was entranced by its first lines, “It had stopped raining.” The reader finds that Faha is a soggy, boggy place, not accustomed to sunny days that stretch on forever and make life intriguing. It stops raining the Wednesday of Holy Week and the sun stays, as if the Good Lord himself willed it on the most sacred time of the Catholic year.

The writer’s style is beguiling, filled with his Irish voice and there is no stopping the reading once you’ve begun. You even begin speaking like the characters after awhile. You’re hooked. The ending can’t be predicted. You’re along for a joyful, sometimes heart-rending, ride.

Ann Patchett promoted the novel on one of her “New Book Friday” sessions from Parnassus Books in Nashville. I love her books so anything she suggests gets my attention. I am Irish-American, my grandfather came as a lad from County Roscommon with his own sad story that took him all the way to his 90^th birthday. He was a serious man yet kind, the man who always brought ice cream to our house. When I lost my college scholarship, he sent me a 20-dollar bill every month. That was happiness!

There is an Irish voice in literature. You know it when you hear it. Filled with words and humor and sadness. You could say that about writers from other traditions. Jewish writers, for instance, know a bit about dark humor. But literature has a strong Irish voice and that’s what you hear in Williams. He  lives with his wife Christine Breen and their pets in a renovated cottage in west Clare abandoned in 1910 when Chris's grandfather left for the U.S. 

This Is happiness. Keep saying it while pedaling your beat-up bicycle through the heather in County Clare or wherever you may be.

This Is Happiness.

Postscript: Checking out Williams' web site, I entered his world and his wife's. Listening to a snippet of their book, "In Kiltumper: A Year in an Irish Garden," I decided to buy the audiobook. I don't listen to many audiobooks but this one combines the voices of the writers with gardening and a view of rural Ireland in 2021. How could I resist?